The road less traveled

His oldest child — Mallory — had just left for journalism school at the University of Missouri. Dad had struggled with the goodbyes.

I asked if he’d shed some tears.

“Only everyday,” he said.

Gulp.

“Well,” I said, “I’m with you, brother.”

My oldest, Katy, is off to the University of Texas at San Antonio to study journalism. No room has ever looked so empty as the one she once occupied.

She was born June 17, 1987, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She arrived five weeks early.

My wife and I were living temporarily with ESPN broadcaster Jon Miller at the time while waiting to close on a new home.

Dick Howser, a friend of mine who’d led the Kansas City Royals to a World Series championship, died a few hours before Katy was born. That night, Alan Wiggins made a boneheaded play that allowed the New York Yankees to defeat the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium.

By the time I got into the clubhouse, players had heard my wife was in labor. They believed she was back in Baltimore instead of a few miles away in Manhattan.

“I’m getting you a car,” Eddie Murray said.

Katy weighed five pounds. I remember being able to hold her in the palm of my hand.

Last year I laughed at a friend as he struggled when his son, who was also his best friend, went to play football at Hardin-Simmons. I thought I’d handle the circle of life better. I haven’t.

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult–once we truly understand and accept it–then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”